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How to quote a source...

The answer is to quote it like Walter Martin used to quote his sources.

What Walter used to do was quote the source, the real source!
Listen to the debates of Martin against a JW and you will hear how this is done.

Walter would list a source, then tell the person, "Its written in the July 1972 Watchtower, that I just happen to have a copy of here" then pull out that very same Watchtower.

Thats how you quote a source!

You have the information as written or created, and have it so the other person you are talking to can read or watch the whole thing and make sure you are not taking things out of context.

Now in the age of the internet the same rules apply.
If you are in a debate over a religious point or talking about some teacher or a different religion, and you want to use a source to support what you are saying, do so by having the person able to read or watch the full real source as first written or created.

This means you dont want to just list a source that is not the original.
You want to prove that you know what you are talking about.

But the sad truth is, because of the nature of the way a computer can click copy/paste so quickly, it has become far too easy to post an address to a website that is not the original source but is a slanted source, and thereby not listing the things you want the other person to see in their original full context.

This is something Walter Martin would not do.

An example is as I gave above, where Walter Martin would try to have the original copy of whatever Mormon of JW source he was quoting.

If Walter Martin was quoting a Mormon newspaper's written work, he would try to have in his hands a photo copy of what he was quoting .

Walter was always telling people "Here, read the whole thing for yourself!"

This allowed the other person to see the full context of whatever Walter was quoting to make sure things were being told correctly.
It makes Walter's arguments look even stronger, because they are seen to be based on a very firm foundation of cold-hard
facts and not just the opinions of other people that happen to think the same as Walter.

On the flip side of this, is the modern tendency to post the address of slanted videos and slanted websites.
This is where you post an address to a video that was created to attack the thing you also plan to attack...

An example of this is when you wish to talk to a JW about the errors of their religion, and yet all you do is post the address of videos that are created to attack the JW religion.

Thats not going to help!

What these types of slanted websites and videos do, is take one or two sentences that someone might have said or written and use them to build an hour long video up attacking them over.

Mostly this is a problem because this will clearly look to the JW like the sentences were taken out of their context.
This is because the "source" you are quoting and referring the JW to is not the original !

I see this a lot of times happen when some guy wants to attack a Christian teacher, (Like Walter Martin) and they will post a link to a video attacking the Christian that will take one of two sentences the person said, and build up a huge attack against them for an hour, just over these few words.

And when you manage to track down the full context of what the person said, you will see that many times the anti-Christian video was taking words out of their context.

So my advice is this-
Do what Walter Martin used to teach us to do, and list the source....
Have it there for the other person to check....
Dont just lift a few words, but have the original there, or its web address so that every word you say can be confirmed!

Years and years ago I was listening to a recording of Walter Martin talking, and Walter told the story of a young Christian boy who had recently writing to Walter about a debate the young man was in with a person who was a Christian Scientist.

The young man wrote to Walter and asked if it was true that Mary Baker Eddy had ever gotten divorced?

Mr Martin said he could tell by the young man's words that the guy was really wishing Walter would say she had gotten divorced so that they young man could use this against the older lady he was debating.

But Walter Martin answer that Mary Baker Eddy got married but her husband died, so she was totally free to marry another.
She did get married again, but her 2nd husband was unfaithful to her and totally abandoned her, and so Walter said that she was quite right to divorce him...

Now years go by....I had almost forgotten that recording of Martin telling that story.

Then one day at a home fellowship of a friend, I found myself in a friendly debate over some things that Walter Martin had taught about the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
There was a lady there who was really into the speaking in tongues gift, and so she took issue with a few things that Walter had said about that gift on his radio show.

At some point in our discussion, the lady said that she had recently learned that Walter had taught in favor of people getting divorced... and she felt that that also was against the Bible.

I gave that a thought, then asked for where she got that idea from?

She said she had read about it in a mag that she gets.
I was interested to see how this would play out, so I asked her to bring that mag next time so I could confirm what she was saying?

a week goes by and I see her again, and I see in her pile of bibles she carried that she had the mag for me to read.
I was handed it, and the page was marked.

What I was reading was from some type of mag that was supporting the speaking in tongues gift.
The whole mag seemed aimed for people that believed all should speak in tongues,

I started to read the part attacking Walter Martin, and yes, it was attempting to make a case that Walter had come out in favor of people getting divorce.

However I also noticed that the writer of this story was only taking a few words that Walter had said...a few words here, a few words there..

Then I noticed something else!

I suddenly remembered that I actually knew where these words by Walter Martin were taken from!
,,,it was from that same recording dealing with the divorce of Mary Baker Eddy!!!!!!

The writer of this story in the mag had taken one or two words that Martin had said on that recording, and had used them out of their context to make it seem like Walter was teaching that everyone could get divorced if they wanted for any reason.

It was right then and there I learned the value of listing the original source.

For in the original source it was clear that Walter was not saying what the mag wanted us to believe he said.

This is the danger of posting a slanted source.

This is why Walter Martin made it his normal style, to always back-up what he was saying with the original source material.